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‘Thank God I asked for a singing teacher!’: Kingsley Ben-Adir on bringing Bob Marley to life

It was always going to be a dream gig. Here, the actor talks about perfecting his patois, the power of authenticity and what he learned working on the Barbie set

“It’s about wanting the people who love you to feel safe,” he says, adding: “I definitely find it cringe when I read actors using the media as a space to vent their therapy.” However well-meaning a conversation with a journalist might be in the moment, he continues, the nuances of a person’s private life can easily get lost in translation when written down. Last year’s Marvel series, Secret Invasion, was not well received by fans or critics, but by general agreement Ben-Adir was the best thing in it, a mesmerising baddie with a hypnotic Welsh lilt he based on the dialect of Bluetown, a mixed-raced community in Cardiff. “The family were asking for one thing, which was: ‘Keep it real, completely authentic, no white-washing.’ And then I’m reading [early] scripts where that wasn’t fully reflected.” Siding with the Marleys, Ben-Adir was among those who pushed for redrafts that made fuller use of patois, even if that risked limiting the movie’s commercial prospects.

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